A big round of matches in the Sky Bet Championship continues on Saturday when the latest set of games conclude on a day where the promotion challengers look to strengthen their claims for a spot in the Premier League.
As is usually the case on a Saturday we have a TV game to get stuck into to open up the action on Saturday and then the other games come along in the traditional 3pm time slot where we are reliant on the usual places for updates on those.
Saturday’s fixtures are as follows: (3pm unless stated; UK TV in brackets)
Hull City v West Bromwich Albion (12.30pm – Sky Main Event & Sky Football)
Blackburn Rovers v Norwich City
Cardiff City v Stoke City
Ipswich Town v Birmingham City
Middlesbrough v Plymouth Argyle
Queens Park Rangers v Rotherham United
Sheffield Wednesday v Bristol City
Southampton v Millwall
Sunderland v Swansea City
Watford v Huddersfield Town
Special Offer
Sign up for a Boylesports account and bet £10 to get up to £20 in free bets! Perfect offer for the Sky Bet Championship! Click the image below for this great offer! New accounts only. 18+ T&Cs apply. Gamble Aware.
Big Matches
We saw the top two in action on Friday night and the other two promotion chasers are on show on Saturday with third placed Ipswich Town looking to keep pace with those above them when they welcome Birmingham City to Portman Road. Southampton are the other team in the promotion picture and they host a Millwall side who have pressed the panic button to bring Neil Harris back to the club. He takes charge of his first game here. The other two sides in the top six at the start of play also meet at the MKM Stadium where the TV cameras will be in place to show Hull City vs West Brom.
Best of the Rest
The picture at the bottom of the table is almost as congested as it is at the top of it, if not more so, and that gets another chapter played out on Saturday. Two of the bottom three meet at Loftus Road where Queens Park Rangers host Rotherham United, while Sheffield Wednesday, second from bottom at the start of the day, welcome Bristol City to Hillsborough. Huddersfield Town are one of the teams those three are trying to overhaul and they have a trip to Watford to negotiate. Stoke City could also end the day in the bottom three unless they avoid defeat when they head to Cardiff City.
Betting
Ipswich Town had a wobble of one win in nine Championship matches around Christmas and throughout January but they look like they have put that behind them now having won their last three games and even though they needed a very late winner in midweek they will have taken so much positive energy from the success of that and I think they can come out on top when they play host to Birmingham City on Saturday afternoon.
Birmingham head to Suffolk having won their last two matches but since then they have lost their coach Tony Mowbray for a while and I don’t think there is a guarantee that they respond well to that. They are poor travellers anyway and there is still the Wayne Rooney influence on this side where they overplay a little too much and you don’t want to be doing that against this Ipswich side. I just think Birmingham might be getting the Tractor Boys at the wrong time and that would have been the case with or without Mowbray. Birmingham have only won two of their last 14 away games – at Cardiff and Stoke – so a trip to Portman Road, where only Leeds United have left with three points this season and that was back in August, looks beyond the Blues to me.
Tips
Back Ipswich Town (-1AH) to beat Birmingham City for a 3/10 stake at 1.92 with Bet365
